Georgette Braun: R.I.P. misery list, you did good

Which witch? The America’s Most Miserable Cities list — you know, the one that made targeted communities across the U.S. cringe.

Last year, Forbes exposed Rockford’s warts on a national stage when the magazine deemed the Forest City third most miserable in the country, behind Detroit and Flint, Michigan.

Ugh! was the collective cry in Rockford. We all know how bad life is in Detroit, and we were just two steps behind.

I’d been waiting for the Great and Powerful Forbes to release its 2014 list. I wanted to see whether the evil winged monkeys of crime, poverty and joblessness would again reveal Rockford — home of the knitting machine that made sock monkeys an iconic folk figure — as wretchedly unhappy.

The list, which seems to have started around 2007, according to my Internet research, typically was released around February. Last week, I contacted Forbes to ask about the next America’s Most Miserable Cities ranking.

“We are no longer publishing this list,” Wendy Furrer Egan, senior director of editorial publicity for Forbes Media, said in an email, without providing a specific answer to my question of how many years Forbes had been publishing the list. “We only published it for a few years, and it didn’t generate enough interest to continue with it.”

Hmm.

That sounds to John Groh as if the list didn’t make enough money for Forbes, a business magazine known for its lists and rankings. Groh is president and CEO of the Rockford Area Convention & Visitors Bureau. “They are really admitting a profit motive, versus a journalistic approach that was relevant and worthy for public discussion,” he said.

Guess that kills Misery Loves Company Part II, he said, jokingly. The tongue-in-cheek media campaign last year in response to Forbes’ ranking showcased Rockford’s tourist attractions, people, quality of life and community pride.

Rockford Alderman Tim Durkee, R-1, told me he had written a letter to Forbes saying that its misery list was “long on mouth and short on solutions. We can’t use it to improve our city.”

Other cities that ranked badly on the list over the years also defended themselves and responded with pushback against Forbes and its methods of determining misery. For example, in Memphis in 2010, community members organized a pep rally and mailed letters to the magazine bragging about the city.

In Rockford, the list did much more. It helped launch Transform Rockford.

“It was an indication of concerns the community faces,” Mike Schablaske, executive director of Transform Rockford, said of Forbes’ critique of Rockford. “If it spurred engagement in the community, then some good came from it.”

A group of local businessmen formed Transform Rockford in the spring of 2013 and thousands of residents provided input at dozens of community meetings held earlier this year. The movement aims to address Rockford’s social and economic problems and propel the city onto lists of the top 25 places to live by 2025. Committees will develop strategies and timelines over the next several months to address issues like crime, education, jobs and health.

So far, proponents have been getting behind the idea of a much better Rockford. When specific proposals surface for how we should combine, bolster or nix certain programs and services, though, the yellow brick road may not appear to be so bright.

Let’s just click our work boots together and remember that there’s no place like a new — or at least, an improved — home.